


double spades

by mavnificent



Category: Glee
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mavnificent/pseuds/mavnificent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re seniors at McKinley now and they’re still not sure what it is to be grown up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	double spades

**Author's Note:**

> Pre-season 3, I think? Written back when we were sure they were all seniors. Sooo....

Mercedes and Tina have a routine.  
  
They have always crashed at one another’s house whenever they could find the time (between boyfriends and jobs), but towards the middle of summer it had become something of a crutch for them. It had become a crutch for Mercedes, really, who felt like she had gained and lost everything over the course of three months. From Quinn, to Kurt, to Sam— like life was rushing past her, hissing through her fingertips with the grainy prickle of sand. Too much, too fast; it cut her hands and made them sting.  
  
She thinks maybe Tina knows how powerless she feels sometimes by the way Tina looks over at her, but Tina’s Tina and she never says anything. She’ll go off about Mike and his mom, about feminism, about ableism, but she respects the line Mercedes’s has drawn around herself, though Mercedes isn’t too sure she wants Tina to respect anything at all.  
  
Sometimes she forgets that Tina isn’t Kurt. That Tina’s not going to turn a disbelieving eye on her and demand  _What’s wrong, hot mama?_  
  
Mercedes doesn’t mind, though. She loves Tina and she has fun binging on the  _Saw_  movies with her and bonding over the  _Hannibal_ trilogy. They marathon  _Godfather_  and Tina made her sit through her bootlegged copy of  _X-Men: First Class_  even though Mercedes cried intermittently through it. And it wasn’t because Darwin died or because Charles got hurt, but it was because of the way Sam had held tight onto her hand when they had first watched it.  
  
She told Tina their too-buttery popcorn got stuck in her throat.  
  
So they have a routine now. Friday nights are Girls’ Night In.  
  
Their first Friday back at McKinley is greeted with an evening of  _Orphan_ , though it plays in the background since both girls are engaged in a mean game of War.  
  
“Truth or dare?” Mercedes asks as she smacks a seven of spades down. Tina laughs and looks up.  
  
“Seriously?” she asks, setting down a ten of hearts. She nabs Mercedes’s cards. “Truth.”  
  
“How happy are you about Blaine being in New Directions?” Mercedes doesn’t look up as she takes the next cards set down.  
  
Tina stares at the top of Mercedes’s head, lips pressed together softly. She drops her gaze and slides her next card forward: two of spades.  
  
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Kurt seems happy. But…I don’t know. He’s like a miniature Schue.”  
  
She grins when Mercedes looks up with a snort and steals her two of spades with a five of spades. “That’s such a crap answer, girl.”  
  
Tina rolls her eyes. “What _ever._  Your turn, lady mine. Truth or dare?”  
  
“Truth,” Mercedes answers. She sets down a seven of clubs.  
  
“Okay, what do you think of Quinn’s new hairstyle?” Tina steals it with a ten of hearts.  
  
“Tacky,” Mercedes all but snaps. Then softer: “No offense.”  
  
The game of war goes on for several more rounds, silence punctuated by a murderous angry woman in the body of a child; the sweet sounds of their television backdrop. Mercedes’s hands are shaking just a little bit. Tina’s shaken things right off the back of the shelf where Mercedes had put up things like Quinn and Sam and Kurt already. She peeks at Tina through her lashes. Tina never looks sad so much as disappointed and it’s so slight, so soft, that people always miss it. It had been something strange that Sam had once pointed out to her. _Sometimes when people hurt they pretend they don’t hurt_ , he had said while pointedly looking at her. His hand had been warm in hers. Mercedes scrapes her teeth over her lower lip and sets down a five of clubs.  
  
“Truth,” Mercedes says.  
  
“Okay, truth.” Tina responds.  
  
“Do you…” Mercedes pauses. She wants to let Tina all the way in so, so bad, but a part of her doesn’t want the dine and dash treatment. Mercedes cleans grit from the bottom of her nail with the corner of her card before actually setting it down. “Do you ever miss people that are still in your life?”  
  
Tina’s picking black nail polish off of her thumbnail with her forefinger. She slides the top card of her small deck back and forth, back and forth.  
  
“Yeah,” she says quietly. She scoops her hair and twists it back over her shoulder. “I miss Rachel sometimes. We were pretty close when we were freshmen.” She loses her five of diamonds. “And Artie.”  
  
Mercedes blinks. “Artie? Really?”  
  
Tina shrugs. “I miss being his friend. I mean, we still talk sometimes, but…you know. It’s weird.”  
  
“No, I get it.” Mercedes does get it. She gets it way too much. She wants to tell Tina just how much, but she’s afraid to.  
  
“What about you? Truth, same question.”  
  
Mercedes stalls with a handful of popcorn. She thinks of Sam with his earnest face, of Kurt with his weird, infectious laugh. She thinks of Rachel who wanted so badly to be friends, and she thinks of Quinn.  
  
Quinn with her pink hair and lost eyes. It hits Mercedes so hard, how all this sand cut her fingers and hands like glass. It stings. She sets a six of hearts down slowly.  
  
“No,” she says after swallowing her popcorn. “No, not really.”  
  
Tina stares at her, black eyes hard. “Why not?”  
  
Mercedes wants to tell Tina that it’s because they’re not worth it, but it’s such a lie. Sam was worth it. Kurt and Rachel and Quinn too. She feels like they went on their own paths, unwilling or not, and left her. It’s irrational and she’s being petty, but it doesn’t stop her chest from aching.  
  
“Because some people are only there for the learning experience.”  
  
They’re words her mother told her once when she had come home sobbing over Quinn. Quinn, who didn’t care. Quinn, whose face she couldn’t read worth a damn. Quinn, whom she thought she knew but apparently didn’t.  
  
“Dare,” Tina says without provocation. She hasn’t put any new cards down. Her hands are resting on her knees and she’s staring at Mercedes in a way Mercedes has never experienced. There’s a hard edge to it and Mercedes is convinced Tina is about to launch into one of her long-winded rants, but the corners of her lips only pinch before shes reiterates: “ _Dare,_  Mercedes.”  
  
And Mercedes can only respond with a dumbfounded nod. Tina reaches over and grabs the thin deck from Mercedes’s hand, shuffling the cards together.  
  
“I dare you to look at the people you miss and ask yourself if the lesson’s over.”  
  
Tina’s jaw is squared and tight. The cards snap together like fingers as she shuffles them.  
  
Mercedes squints. “What?”  
  
“School’s in session,” Tina says. She taps the cards against the edge of the popcorn bowl. “We still have a lot of learning to do. Just because you’re frustrated doesn’t mean you should stop trying to get it.”  
  
Mercedes barks a laugh and when Tina flinches, she immediately regrets it.  
  
“It’s not that easy,” she says, because she doesn’t want to apologize yet. She’s too frustrated and fed up and she thinks maybe she’ll wake up before Tina in the morning and apologize. But now? No, no, no. Not now.  
  
“Nothing that’s worth it ever is,” Tina responds. It sounds like a question. Maybe she’s not that sure either. Mercedes is beginning to think no one is sure about anything anymore.  
  
Tina sets down the deck and spreads it out before flipping them all over. Her fingers pass over them.  
  
“There are two six of spades in this deck,” she says after a while.  
  
Mercedes doesn’t know why that matters or why she should care, and Tina’s expression is ambivalent. She isn’t even sure how to feel anymore, so Mercedes swallows down her panic with a small handful of popcorn.


End file.
